Blindness Cited in Nursing Homes

Published: May 4, 1995

BOSTON, May 3—
A survey of 30 nursing homes in Maryland has found that blindness and poor eyesight affect one-third of the patients.

"The magnitude of the problem of visual impairment in nursing home residents is extremely high," said Dr. James M. Tielsch, an epidemiologist who conducted the survey.

Cataracts accounted for 27 percent of those cases. Doctors said this meant that many of the vision problems in nursing homes could be corrected, since cataracts can be treated surgically.

The survey of 499 residents in 30 nursing homes in the Baltimore area found that 17 percent were legally blind, while an additional 19 percent had vision that was worse than 20-40.

The study, conducted at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, is being published on Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine. The survey also found that blindness was 50 percent more common among blacks than whites. Besides cataracts, the most common causes of blindness were corneal opacity, macular degeneration and glaucoma.

Many of the elderly people with poor eyesight also had dementia, and Dr. Tielsch said this complicated decisions about whether they should undergo surgery. He said doctors "want to do the best they can for individual patients, but undergoing surgery, for a person whose cognitive function prevents fully understanding what's going on, can be quite an upsetting experience."

"Generally," he said, "it is pretty well accepted that people who are severely impaired would not benefit much."